February 6, 2025 • 39 mins
It was July 29, 2022, just another quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas. The sun had just gone down when 28-year-old Shommaonique Oliver got a panicked phone call. That’s when her nightmare began. Three of her children- her middle daughters, nine-year-old Zi’Ariel Robinson-Oliver, eight-year-old A’Miyah Hughes, and little five-year-old Te’Mari Robinson-Oliver were missing. Law enforcement found them a few hours later. Divers dragged their lifeless little bodies out of a neighboring pond.
Initially this was described as a drowning in the local media, but months later, law enforcement said that these three little girls had been murdered. The cause was strangulation. And this person could strike again at any time.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. I had info on the Cass County
three triple black child murder case out of Atlanta, Texas,
which is Cass County. Three little black girls were murdered
about a year ago to cold case right now. Had
some documentation from the police and a judge in Texas
also have points at him and I have some information
(00:31):
with the family, the mother and some other witnesses to
the murders of these three girls.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It was July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, just another
quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas, a tiny town in
East Texas. Atlanta is about a twenty five minute drive
from Texarcana, which is right on the border with Arkansas.
The sun had just gone down when twenty eight year
old Shamanique Oliver got a panicked phone call. Schamanique is
(01:00):
a single mom and a certified nurses aid. She works
at a nursing home in Texarkana. She later told Nancy
Grace that it had been a totally normal day. She
was hanging out with her six children between the ages
of one and ten years old at home. They watched TV,
played and ate a meal together while Shamanique got ready
(01:20):
for a shift. When Shamanique went to work that afternoon.
She left her children in the care of their babysitter,
a thirty one year old cousin of hers named Paris Props.
She and the kids lived in a very rural area.
The one story home is pretty secluded. There are neighbors around,
(01:41):
but it's the kind of home where you can't really
see the neighbors, and it's pretty wild out there. There
are woods and fields behind the house, and the fields
are blocked by barbour fences. Shamanique was helping change a
patient later that evening. She was called to the nurses
station a little after nine pm, and that's when her
(02:03):
nightmare began, because that's when she found out that three
of her children, her three middle daughters, nine year old
Zayaril Robinson Oliver, eight year old of Maya Hughes, and
little five year old to Mari Robinson Oliver, were all missing.
Law enforcement found the little girls a few hours later. Unfortunately, though,
(02:25):
this was not a happy ending. Divers dragged their lifeless
little bodies out of the neighboring pond. Initially, this was
described as a drowning in the local media, but months
later law enforcement in Texas said these three little girls
had been murdered. The cause of death was exphyxiation. All
(02:48):
three of these little girls had been strangled. There seemed
to be a lot of misconceptions about this case. Some
of them involved local rumors. Some of them involved politics,
charges of racism, and of police not doing their jobs.
If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that these
are a lot of the things that often come with
investigations in small towns. But once you look past all that,
(03:13):
at the heart of this case, you have three dead
little girls whose lives were over before they even started,
and you have a family and an entire town crying
out for justice and answers. I said back at the
beginning that shau Minick's nightmare began on July twenty ninth,
twenty twenty two, but she never woke up. It's still
(03:35):
going on, and in East Texas, there's a child killer
still out there, and this person could strike again at
any time. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone murder line.
Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast,
Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as
(03:57):
a small town where murder never happens. I have received
hundreds of messages from people from all around the country
asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them,
their families, and their communities. If you have a case
you'd like me and my team to look into, you
can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone
Murder line at six seven eight seven four four, six
(04:19):
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four, six,
one four or five. So to find out what happened
(05:14):
to Shamanique's daughters, we have to make sense of the timeline.
We need to go back and find out exactly what
was going on and who was around that day. In
her interview with Nancy Grace, Shamnique said that while she
was getting dressed and preparing for her shift, the kids
were behaving totally normally. She made sure they had something
(05:34):
to eat, and they were playing and watching TV, just
generally messing around. Shamanique said that all of her children
were close, but that her three middle daughters, Syaril, Amaya,
and Tamari were the best of friends. They liked to
do things that all little girls like to do. They
like to play outside and ride bikes together. They also
(05:56):
love to hang out in the house and make TikTok videos.
In the interview with Nancy Grace, Shamanique clarified that the
last time that she spoke to her children was when
she called them, and that was sometime between five and
six pm. She asked them what they were going to do.
They said they were going to stay in the house
and finish eating and take a bath. Shamnique was adamant
(06:19):
about the fact that they would not go outside. She said, quote,
they know not to go outside when it gets dark
because there's no lights outside end quote. This is an
important point because, at least in the beginning of the investigation,
everything that came out about these little girl's disappearance made
it sound like just a horrific accident, like the three
(06:40):
little girls had gone outside, maybe for a summertime swim
or something, and then somehow gotten into trouble. But Shamnique
insists it would have been totally out of character for
any of her children to go outside in the dark
to a dark field. She's been saying that to anyone
who would listen from the very beginning. Shamnique said her
shift normally ended around ten PM, and her normal routine
(07:05):
was after she got off work, she would drive from
the nursing home from work back to Atlanta. And again,
just to clarify here, we're talking about a small town
in Texas, Atlanta, Texas, not Atlanta, Georgia. It was only
about twenty five minutes away, so normally she would have
gotten home at around ten thirty pm. But that night
(07:26):
she got that call, and when the call came in,
it was from her neighbor's home phone. When Shamanique picked
up her cousin, Paris, who had been staying with her
at her house and helping her out with babysitting while
she worked, told her that her kids were missing. Shamanique
didn't get many details at that point. She said Paris
(07:48):
didn't specify which kids were missing or exactly what had happened.
Once she heard that her kids were missing, she jumped
in the car and said she started driving fast. Shamanique
was panicking. She called nine to one one and at
the same time she was trying to call her aunt,
who she said live nearby. She was trying to see
if her aunt could meet her at her house. Shamanique
(08:09):
said at that point she was terrified. She was trying
to hold it together, trying to get home as quickly
as she could, and through it all, she really had
no idea what was going on. She made it sound
like the next events were kind of a blur. Now,
as we know from listening to this podcast, sometimes when
people go missing, police don't come right away. Sometimes even
(08:31):
when small children go missing, there's a delay. But fortunately
that was not the case here. By the time Schamanique
made it home, law enforcement was already there on the scene.
There were rangers from the Texas Wildlife Department, Emergency Services personnel,
and detectives from the Cass County Sheriff's Department. All of
these people in law enforcement were scouring those dark woods.
(08:54):
They were looking everywhere for those little girls. When Shamanique
got home, the first thing she did was check on
her three other children, who were fine and safe. The
Texas Game Wardens got the call at around ten pm.
They knew there were three children missing from a residence,
so when they got there, they brought the canine unit
with them. The dog alerted and started walking through those
(09:18):
backwoods toward a pond. It was a pond that was
back through the woods about two hundred yards away near
a neighboring property. Again, this is where it's so important
to try and clarify a location. And this is why
it's so important to understand both the dynamics of the
small town and of the crime scene, because just hearing
(09:38):
the details on the news, you might think this was
a local swimming hole or something. But I took a
look at the footage that was filmed from local news stations,
and that footage tells a very different story. Shamannique said
she had lived in that spot pretty much her whole life,
and she never knew there was a pond back there.
To get to it, you had to go through a
(09:59):
barbed wire fence and through a pretty dense wooded area.
Looking at the pictures, that looked more like a swamp.
Schamnique said her kids would not have known about that pond.
As it got later and later, shal Manique became more
and more frantic. She was focused on one thing and
that was finding her daughters. She was out back in
(10:20):
her yard while law enforcement continued their search, and then
one of the canine dogs alerted and they saw something
an overturned bike. In pictures in the news reports, you
can see that it's a purple kid's bike with pink petals.
Next to the bike was what looked like a blue
scooter kind of tipped over, leaning in on the bike.
(10:41):
After the dog alerted and the police found the bike,
they saw something else. The dogs were pulling toward that pond,
and police saw a pair of tennis shoes next to
the waterline. Then they saw footprints in the mud leading
down to the water, and the family confirmed a law
(11:02):
enforcement that that pair of little tennis shoes belonged to
sham Manique's five year old daughter Tomory. And there was
something else that was very strange about those shoes. On
Nancy Grace Shamanique said, Tomorri's shoes quote were found out
there stacked on top of each other, Chris Crossway, like
you would pack them in a suitcase end quote. She
(11:25):
said emphatically. My kids never do that. Never. Divers went
into the water and then in the early morning hours
of July thirtieth, at around two am, they found Shamanique's
eight year old daughter, Amaya. Amaya was the first, but
(11:46):
unfortunately not the last. In the end, investigators found all
three girls dead in that pond. They pulled their little
bodies out of the water one by one and sent
them for autopsis. After hearing that Amaya's body had been found.
Shaman had to be taken to the hospital. She later
(12:09):
learned that she was having a heart attack. She had
already had one hard episode after her mother died from COVID,
and now she had lost three daughters in one night.
After Shamanique's three daughters were found dead in that pond,
the story made local news. At first. The media reports
(12:30):
indicated that these deaths were being investigated as a drowning, which,
while horrific, is something that made it sound like it
might have been an unavoidable accident. But that's not what
happened here. Looking back in hindsight, I think that these
reports might have come out because of some comments made
early on by the Cass County Sheriff's office. Cass County
(12:52):
Sheriff Larry Rowe told a local newspaper, The Gazette, quote,
we have no idea what the girls were doing there
end quote. And then a lieutenant game warden named Jason
Jones told a local news station KTL that it was
unknown whether the little girls were swimmers or not. There
was another comment made by someone in law enforcement about
(13:13):
none of the little girls having life jackets on. So
all of those comments taken together definitely, in my opinion,
led toward the story being reported as a drowning, at
least initially. Very quickly, this case was turned over from
the local police department to the Texas Rangers. The officer
assigned to that case was named Josh Mason. Now, the
(13:37):
Texas Rangers are unique organization. Officially, they're the Texas State
law enforcement units. So like Arkansas has the Arkansas State Police,
in Texas, they're a little bit unique because they have
the Rangers. The Texas Rangers originally actually defended the frontier
back in the eighteen hundreds, and they do have a
(13:58):
complicated and sometimes brutal legacy. Author Doug Swanson wrote about
the alleged war crimes that the Texas Rangers committed back
in the day in his book, which is called Cult
of Glory, and he told NPR that back in the
day they did murder a lot of Mexicans and Mexican
Americans and had a strange idea of frontier justice. But
(14:22):
over the years, the Texas Rangers have modernized. They've actually
become one of the country's most elite detective units. The
Texas Rangers have solved a lot of cold cases it
was actually a Texas Ranger who got the notorious serial
killer Samuel Little to confess, But there have also been
allegations over the years that in some cases they have
(14:43):
coerce confessions. Samuel Little did confess to a lot of murders,
but some of those murders were based on very little evidence,
and a lot of people believe that the Rangers let
him confess to crimes even when there was not necessarily
evidence to back it up, because they wanted to close
those cases. I'm not going to go too far into
(15:04):
the weeds on the If you're interested in Texas Ranger history,
you can see they've had a lot of successes and
some controversies, just like many law enforcement organizations. I'm bringing
this up to make the point that, unlike some of
the cases I cover, this was not a case of
just some small town police department with no resources doing
everything themselves. They did do the right thing. They called
(15:26):
for outside help, they brought in the Rangers. The Texas
Rangers were there from day one. When those bodies were
pulled out of the water. On August second, the Texas
Rangers released a statement. They said, quote at the request
of the cass County Sheriff's Office the Texas Rangers are
investigating the drowning deaths of the three juveniles, ages five, eight,
(15:48):
and nine. The drowning occurred July thirtieth, around two am
at a private pond off State Highway seventy seven. The
three siblings had been reported missing around ten pm the
previous night. This is an ongoing investigation and additional information
will be released when it's available. Police did not give
(16:08):
out much information, which is totally normal in cases like this.
And remember this was two days after the girl's bodies
had been found. And that statement did two things. Number one,
it reinforced the public perception that these had been drownings.
And also, I'm noticing, in my opinion, the wordings seem strange.
(16:29):
They said the drowning occurred rather than saying the bodies
were recovered at two am, and whether it was on
purpose or not. This later caused a lot of confusion.
This statement seemed to assume a cause of death and
also a time of death, which is not normally standard
protocol in these investigations. For the next few months, there
(16:53):
was basically nothing on the news about these deaths. It
was not until eight months later that the Cass County
District Attorney, Courtney Shelton, announced that they were investigating the
deaths as a humide. On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty three,
Courtney Shelton said in a statement, quote autopsy reports concluded
(17:14):
the manner of death for all three girls with homicide,
indicating evidence of strangulation. The girls also suffered lacerations to
their faces. Multiple witness statements have been obtained, DNA testing
is ongoing, and the investigation will continue end quote. So
now everyone knew that three young girls had been strangled
(17:35):
and put into that pond. The rangers were now investigating
the case as a homicide, and there was a child
killer on the loose in Atlanta, Texas. It had been
eight months since the all of her sisters' bodies were
found in a pond. The district attorney had announced that
(17:56):
the girls had not drowned, as everyone initially thought that
their deaths were being investigated as homicides, and after months
of silence, Shawnique started speaking out. She told The Daily
Beast that strangers on social media had put horribly abusive things.
They were writing that she was a deadbeat mom, some
of them writing that her kids were better off dead.
(18:18):
I think at this point a lot of people were
wondering why she had been silent all this time, But
it turned out according to Shamanique, she told The Daily
Beast she suspected foul play from the jump. She also said,
quote fuck everyone else's feelings, I want answers end quote.
She wondered, just like everyone else did, why investigators had
(18:42):
waited so long to tell the public about these homicides.
It's possible that they held information back in the beginning
because they were focusing on a suspect, trying to make
a case against someone, and then after several months, maybe
they hit a dead end. Maybe they thought that they
were going to get more DNA or other types of
physical evidence from the pond, and because the little girl's
(19:04):
bodies had been there for several hours, they weren't able to.
This is all just speculation, but the bottom line is
that there had been months with no arrest, months where
a child killer was on the loose and the public
was totally unaware. At the end of the press release,
the District Attorney asked anyone with new information that would
(19:27):
help lead to an arrest to contact the Texas Rangers
So to me, the fact that the DA issued this
press release and that the police made a point of
asking the public for information means that somewhere there is
a missing piece and they know someone knows something. So
now that we know that those little girls did not
walk out of that house into that pond by themselves,
(19:50):
we know that the crime could have begun somewhere else,
possibly inside the home. So what could have happened inside
that one story house. Let's go back again to the
night that the kids went missing, July twenty ninth. N
is at work, she's changing a patient. She goes to
the nursing station. She gets a call from her cousin Paris.
(20:12):
And now I'm just going to point out something else
that she told Nancy Grace, because it seemed like even
at this point, she wonders why he's just now letting
her know about this. She also wondered why he was
calling her from the neighbor's house, why he hadn't first
called nine to one to one. On July twenty ninth,
(20:32):
according to the historical data I found on the internet,
on that date in Texarcana, sunset was at eight eighteen pm.
Remember this is the middle of the summer, so it
didn't get fully dark until about thirty minutes after that. Still,
it raises red flags for me that a babysitter in
a small house didn't notice three kids were missing until
(20:53):
after dark. Later, a local news station interviewed a neighbor,
a woman named Josephine Webster. She told this local news
station KTLA, that the guy presents ammably, meaning Paris, who
was staying in Shamanique's house, came over and asked her
for her house phone. So I'm wondering the same thing
(21:14):
that it sounds like sham Minique was, why did he
get the neighbor to call nine one one? Did he
not have a cell phone? Because the first thing that
I would have done if I was babysitting and someone's
children were missing was call their mom right that second.
By the way, Josephine said she was driving home at
around nine point thirty when she saw Paris. Now, remember,
(21:34):
Shamanique said she got the call a little after nine pm,
just a few minutes time difference. But as we know,
in cases like this, those few minutes, those tiny details
can be crucial. There are some indications that very early
on in the investigation, police were asking some of the
same questions that Shamanique was, and that rather than focusing
(21:56):
on sex offenders who were passing through the area, they
might be focusing on someone much closer to home. Shamanique
gave Nancy Gray some more details that I believe could
be crucial to this case. She said that right after
the authorities told her they found her little eight year
old Amaya's body, she saw something else. She said that
(22:18):
the divers pulled some tangled clothes out of the pond. Later,
investigators showed her photos of what they found. She recognized
that clothing as jackets that belonged to her children. But
the strange thing was, according to Shamanique, these jackets were
ones that her kids had outgrown. She said they had
thrown them into the trash at home. This again raises
(22:41):
a huge red flag because that suggests that someone else,
probably the killer, had been inside the house because someone
had to fish those jackets out of the trash. I
don't think that's something the little girls would have done
on their own. Shamanique said something else that was chilling
to me. She said the jackets were quote tied together
like a rope end quote. This is getting really dark,
(23:06):
but this is, unfortunately where my mind has to go
to try and figure out what happened those little girls.
What were those jackets for? Were they put there to
tie the girls up, or to tie them together so
their bodies would sink? Or did whatever bad thing happen
to them happen first in the house and then somehow
the killer dragged the bodies out to the pond using
(23:27):
those jackets. The cass County DA's press release referred to
the fact that the little girl's injuries were much more
extensive than had been initially reported. Local news stations had
reported that the little girl's spaces were bruised and that
they had lacerations on their faces, deep cuts and bruises.
(23:51):
Shamanique gave Nancy Grace more disturbing details. She said that
investigators had showed her photos of her daughter's bodies. Shamanique
said that Tamari had what she described as a busted lip,
but that her nine year old had extensive injuries and
were not just talking about a few cuts. She said
(24:12):
that they, presumably meaning the people who prepared her daughter
for burial, had to quote reconstruct one side of her face.
It looked like she took a beating on one side
of her face and it pulled her skin off end quote.
When the investigators talked to Shamanique, they also broke the
(24:35):
devastating news to her that they believed that all three
of her girls had been molested. Now, at this point,
a lot of people wondered why it took so long
to release autopsy results. There was some confusion here, and
I think it's really important to differentiate between what was
being told to the family and what was being made public.
(24:57):
Revolt Black News Weekly has been doing a lot of
reporting on this case. Urbienne said they contacted the cass
County DA office. They said that they were told the
autopsy had been delayed, but then when the press release
came out, it made it clear that authorities had known
from the beginning that homicide was the cause of death,
(25:18):
that they never thought this was some kind of accidental drowning.
Rolling Stone reached out to the District Attorney's office and
the DA. Courtney Shelton clarified a few things for Rolling Stone,
including the timeline. Courtney Shelton said that at least since
early August of twenty twenty two, just a few days
after the little girl's bodies were pulled out of that pond.
(25:41):
The DA's office had the autopsy results, and they knew
this had been a homicide. She said that investigators had
told Shamanique that it was a homicide from the beginning too.
Courtney Shelton said that on August fourth, Josh Mason, the
Texas ranger in charge of the investigation quote, met with
Shamanique Oliver, the mother of the children, and her father
(26:03):
and notified them that the deaths of all all three
children were not accidents. Anne provided both of them with
details from the preliminary autopsy report stating that the cause
of death was homicide end quote. Police got a lot
of criticism after that press release because a lot of
people wondered why it took them so long to make
(26:24):
their manner of death public and failed to warn the
community that there was a dangerous sexual predator and a
child killer at large, and a lot of people, including
Shamanique and the local Black Panther chapter, wondered if the
investigation would have unfolded differently if police were investigating the
death of three little white girls. Let's go back again.
(26:48):
Let's look at the victim's pattern of life and start
with the last people to see these little girls. We
cannot overlook the fact that these children were being looked
after by Paris Props. Paris was Shamanique's cousin. Her mother
and Paris's mother are sisters. Is a male cousin in
his early thirties. Shamanique said he had been staying with
(27:10):
her at her house and regularly babysite the children. Now,
Shamanique told urbn she had never had a problem with
Paris before when he was babysitting kids. But she also
shared something else that I found shocking, something she later
repeated to Nancy Grace. She said that her four year
old daughter told her and told police that her three
(27:33):
sisters walked into the woods with Paris Props. Yet, Shamanique
said police talk to Paris the day after the girls
went missing and never questioned him again. Now, I'm just
being logical here. I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm
literally just following the investigation's logical threat. We know that
investigators told Shamanique that they believed her daughters had been molested,
(27:57):
and we know that children are much more likely to
be molested by someone they know or by relative than
a stranger. So any mail, whether they were relative or not.
Any male who was staying in that home with those
children would need to be closely looked at by law enforcement.
So let's take a closer look at Paris Props. Because
(28:17):
there's been very little said about him. Most news reports
don't mention his name. There weren't any other males there
that night. We don't know a lot about the children's fathers,
but Shaminique has said that she was a single mom
and that the children's fathers had no contact with her
or with their children. I don't know if Schamanique was
(28:38):
ever suspicious of her cousin Paris, but it definitely seems
like by what she said publicly. Once the Texas Rangers
talked to her and her father, once they laid out
the case for her in early August, it seems clear
that something changed her mind. We don't know exactly what
the rangers told her, but we do know that after
(29:01):
they told Shamanique what they believed was going on, she
tried to run out the door. She said she remembers
thinking she was going to go out and hurt her cousin,
meaning Paris. Shamanique also had said something else that's crucial.
She said Paris has not been cooperative with the investigation.
She said Paris has not talked to her about it,
(29:22):
and that he moved out of her house and went
to live with his mom, Lemisha. She said he won't
talk to her and he won't talk to the police.
Neither Paris nor his mother have spoken publicly about this,
but if you look through his mother's social media, it's
obvious that she and her son have had issues before
with law enforcement. Back in twenty twenty one, Lemisha Paris's
(29:46):
mom was posting comments on Facebook that are public comments,
and she was talking about an incident in which she
referred to Paris having an altercation with the police and
getting his teeth knocked out. His mom said they meaning
the police hid Paris in another county, and she talks
about wanting to follow a lawsuity against police. My source,
(30:08):
the person who called into this podcast to tell me
about the case, said that he believed that Paris had
filed a lawsuit against police. But I've been looking through
court records and I haven't found any record of that,
so I don't know if the suit was ever filed,
or if it's something they thought about doing. His mom's
comments just seemed to indicate they were looking for a lawyer,
(30:28):
but they hadn't found one yet. Shamanique said that since
Paris me back with his mother, that his mother and
he are both actively trying to keep a police away
and they are not talking. Paris does have a criminal record.
I found some gun charges and drug charges. They were
(30:49):
mainly for small amounts of marijuana, meaning less than two ounces,
And of course I must point out none of these
things indicate that he's a murderer. Obviously, everyone is innocent
until proven guilty. I'm just trying to understand Paris and
the family dynamics since there's been so little reporting out
there about it. Paris did have a brother named Kevin Shepherd,
(31:11):
and Kevin Shepherd is a convicted killer. Again, I'm not
going to go too far into the details on Kevin's case, because,
of course, anyone's family members crimes are not a reflection
of them. It's a completely separate issue. But I think
it's important because it might explain a why Paris might
not want to talk to the police and beat some
(31:33):
of his mother Laitia's comments on social media and her
general attitude towards law enforcement in twenty twenty two, Paris's brother,
Kevin Shepherd, got life in prison for killing Donny Coombs
and Cynthia Arnold, a couple who went missing in September
of twenty eighteen. Cynthia was a mother who, at the
(31:54):
age of forty, had a run of bad luck. She
lost her job, she got a divorce, and she started
getting into methamphetamines. That's when she met her boyfriend Donnie Coombs,
he was also into drugs. In September of twenty eighteen,
a sheriff's office investigator in a neighboring county, Marion County,
said that she responded to a call and found a
burning red truck on a remote county road. By the
(32:17):
time the flames had been extinguished, that fire had burned
so hot the truck rims had melted to the road.
That truck belonged to Kevin Shepherd. Inside the truck, police
found the bodies of Donnie and Cynthia. When this first happened,
it seemed like the police had suspicions that Kevin might
(32:37):
have been involved, but they didn't have enough evidence until
an eyewitness came forward in twenty nineteen. This witness said
she was hanging out with Kevin in late September of
twenty eighteen. She said Kevin took her to an area
with no running water or electricity. Donnie and Cynthia were
there too, and this person said that all of them
(32:58):
were doing drugs. Then she said she was horrified when
Kevin basically said watch this. According to this witness, Kevin
shot both victims in the head and then dragged their
bodies to a fire pit and burned them. The FBI
and local law enforcement went to that location. They checked
(33:19):
the fire pit and they found traces of human bone.
Kevin got life without the possibility of parole. He's currently
behind bars serving out a sentence, and prosecutors said the
motive in that case was the fact that Donnie, one
of the victims, was supposedly going to testify against Kevin's uncle,
a man named Gary Shepherd, in a felony theft case.
(33:41):
Gary is also facing charges, but his trial has not
started yet. According to KSLA, when Lemisha Parris's mother was
asked about the jury's decision, she said, quote, I kind
of figured it was going to go this way because
we live in Cass County and that's how they operate.
End quote. Lemisia said that the family planned to appeal
(34:04):
the jury's verdict. I've not spoken to Lemesha or to Paris,
and obviously anyone has the right to not speak to
police without an attorney. In fact, that's what I would
advise most people to do. But I can say that
it's a red flag to me that Lemisha seems to
put all the blame on law enforcement. I was looking
(34:27):
through criminal records and I found something else that I
thought was interesting in Paris's criminal record. In another case,
he pleaded guilty to possession of a dangerous drug called
Gaba pinton. It's an anti epilepsy drug, but it's a
drug that has been used in some cases as a
date rape drug. So obviously my mind goes back to
(34:49):
that dark place, back to that house, into the dark
things that could have happened there. If the house was
the real crime scene and the bike was put by
the pond to stage something, then we have to ask ourselves.
Could the killer have tried to put the girls to sleep?
Was one of them more badly injured than the others
because she tried to wake up and intervene. Remember Josephine,
(35:14):
the neighbor who the local news station talked to the
reporter who interviewed her, Rading Edwards really seemed to care
deeply about this case. Radin said, quote, I would like
to see it come to an end. Somebody needs to
go to jail for this end quote. We see this
story over and over. The news organization contacts law enforcement,
(35:35):
they ask for a comment. Law enforcement says, we're not
giving out any details, and often the news reports stopped there.
But in this case, the reporters did a good thing.
They went that extra step. They drove out to that area,
and they obviously started canvassing and knocking on doors. That's
when Raydin interviewed Josephine, the neighbor. Josephine confirmed what had
(35:56):
already been reported on the news. She talked about Paris
coming to her house using her phone and calling Shamanique.
She added another crucial detail, one that threw a lot
more shade on Paris props. Josephine told the news channel quote,
he was wet, and I noticed that it looked like
(36:18):
all the way down, not sweat, it looked like water
end quote. So this, I have to say, blows my mind.
The sores who have been talking to about the case
the one who called the podcast says that Shamanique is
wondering the same thing that a lot of people are.
Why hasn't Paris been questioned more thoroughly and why hasn't
(36:40):
there been an arrest. Paris's mother has posted something else
that's interesting on social media. She put a photo of
a warrant the police had compelling Paris to give his
DNA to law enforcement and allowing them to use force
to get the DNA if necessary. I would love to
(37:00):
know what happened without warrant, because my source says they
believe that the search warrant was never executed. But Paris's
mother claimed in her post that Paris has voluntarily given
his DNA. So if the authorities were able to do testing,
and if they have Paris's DNA, why haven't they ruled
anyone in or out? Obviously I don't have access to
(37:21):
the case file, but there could be a few reasons why.
One thought, again, is that because the girl's bodies were
in the water for several hours, the DNA may have degraded.
Maybe police didn't have quite enough for an arrest and
they needed to push for a confession. But Paris and
the people around him, are not talking. The Daily Beast
(37:42):
asked Da Shelton about Paris. She said that he had
been questioned and that quote, he was the last person
known to be with the children prior to their deaths. However,
all possible leads are being followed. End quote. The New
Black Panthers leader Kwan Alex told Rolling Stone, quote, we
(38:02):
do believe that the root is racism. If these were
three beautiful, little, blond haired, blue eyed, white children from
a suburban community in Cass County, they would have handled
this entire investigation completely different. End quote. Whatever has happened
up to now, in my opinion, the focus should be
on what happens next, because Shamanique's neighbors and everyone else
(38:26):
in Cass County is rightfully terrified there could be a
sexual predator and child serial killer hiding in plain sight.
Someone out there knows something. The Texas Rangers, the Cast
County Sheriff's Office, and the Cass County District Attorney's office
are asking for any new information that would lead to
an interest in this case. If you know something, if
(38:48):
you have any detail, no matter how small, that could
help this mother learn what happened to her three children,
please call Texas Ranger Josh Mason at nine O three
two five five five seven two seven. Shamanique told The
Daily Beast quote, all on one want is justice for
my babies end quote. Helen Gone Murder Line is a
(39:18):
production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written
and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Music contributed by Ben Sale and this episode was scored
and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you have a
case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(39:39):
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six ' one four five. Please subscribe and leave us
a review wherever you listen to your podcast, School of
(40:01):
Humans
School of Humans. I had info on the Cass County
three triple black child murder case out of Atlanta, Texas,
which is Cass County. Three little black girls were murdered
about a year ago to cold case right now. Had
some documentation from the police and a judge in Texas
also have points at him and I have some information
(00:31):
with the family, the mother and some other witnesses to
the murders of these three girls.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It was July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, just another
quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas, a tiny town in
East Texas. Atlanta is about a twenty five minute drive
from Texarcana, which is right on the border with Arkansas.
The sun had just gone down when twenty eight year
old Shamanique Oliver got a panicked phone call. Schamanique is
(01:00):
a single mom and a certified nurses aid. She works
at a nursing home in Texarkana. She later told Nancy
Grace that it had been a totally normal day. She
was hanging out with her six children between the ages
of one and ten years old at home. They watched TV,
played and ate a meal together while Shamanique got ready
(01:20):
for a shift. When Shamanique went to work that afternoon.
She left her children in the care of their babysitter,
a thirty one year old cousin of hers named Paris Props.
She and the kids lived in a very rural area.
The one story home is pretty secluded. There are neighbors around,
(01:41):
but it's the kind of home where you can't really
see the neighbors, and it's pretty wild out there. There
are woods and fields behind the house, and the fields
are blocked by barbour fences. Shamanique was helping change a
patient later that evening. She was called to the nurses
station a little after nine pm, and that's when her
(02:03):
nightmare began, because that's when she found out that three
of her children, her three middle daughters, nine year old
Zayaril Robinson Oliver, eight year old of Maya Hughes, and
little five year old to Mari Robinson Oliver, were all missing.
Law enforcement found the little girls a few hours later. Unfortunately, though,
(02:25):
this was not a happy ending. Divers dragged their lifeless
little bodies out of the neighboring pond. Initially, this was
described as a drowning in the local media, but months
later law enforcement in Texas said these three little girls
had been murdered. The cause of death was exphyxiation. All
(02:48):
three of these little girls had been strangled. There seemed
to be a lot of misconceptions about this case. Some
of them involved local rumors. Some of them involved politics,
charges of racism, and of police not doing their jobs.
If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that these
are a lot of the things that often come with
investigations in small towns. But once you look past all that,
(03:13):
at the heart of this case, you have three dead
little girls whose lives were over before they even started,
and you have a family and an entire town crying
out for justice and answers. I said back at the
beginning that shau Minick's nightmare began on July twenty ninth,
twenty twenty two, but she never woke up. It's still
(03:35):
going on, and in East Texas, there's a child killer
still out there, and this person could strike again at
any time. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone murder line.
Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast,
Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as
(03:57):
a small town where murder never happens. I have received
hundreds of messages from people from all around the country
asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them,
their families, and their communities. If you have a case
you'd like me and my team to look into, you
can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone
Murder line at six seven eight seven four four, six
(04:19):
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four, six,
one four or five. So to find out what happened
(05:14):
to Shamanique's daughters, we have to make sense of the timeline.
We need to go back and find out exactly what
was going on and who was around that day. In
her interview with Nancy Grace, Shamnique said that while she
was getting dressed and preparing for her shift, the kids
were behaving totally normally. She made sure they had something
(05:34):
to eat, and they were playing and watching TV, just
generally messing around. Shamanique said that all of her children
were close, but that her three middle daughters, Syaril, Amaya,
and Tamari were the best of friends. They liked to
do things that all little girls like to do. They
like to play outside and ride bikes together. They also
(05:56):
love to hang out in the house and make TikTok videos.
In the interview with Nancy Grace, Shamanique clarified that the
last time that she spoke to her children was when
she called them, and that was sometime between five and
six pm. She asked them what they were going to do.
They said they were going to stay in the house
and finish eating and take a bath. Shamnique was adamant
(06:19):
about the fact that they would not go outside. She said, quote,
they know not to go outside when it gets dark
because there's no lights outside end quote. This is an
important point because, at least in the beginning of the investigation,
everything that came out about these little girl's disappearance made
it sound like just a horrific accident, like the three
(06:40):
little girls had gone outside, maybe for a summertime swim
or something, and then somehow gotten into trouble. But Shamnique
insists it would have been totally out of character for
any of her children to go outside in the dark
to a dark field. She's been saying that to anyone
who would listen from the very beginning. Shamnique said her
shift normally ended around ten PM, and her normal routine
(07:05):
was after she got off work, she would drive from
the nursing home from work back to Atlanta. And again,
just to clarify here, we're talking about a small town
in Texas, Atlanta, Texas, not Atlanta, Georgia. It was only
about twenty five minutes away, so normally she would have
gotten home at around ten thirty pm. But that night
(07:26):
she got that call, and when the call came in,
it was from her neighbor's home phone. When Shamanique picked
up her cousin, Paris, who had been staying with her
at her house and helping her out with babysitting while
she worked, told her that her kids were missing. Shamanique
didn't get many details at that point. She said Paris
(07:48):
didn't specify which kids were missing or exactly what had happened.
Once she heard that her kids were missing, she jumped
in the car and said she started driving fast. Shamanique
was panicking. She called nine to one one and at
the same time she was trying to call her aunt,
who she said live nearby. She was trying to see
if her aunt could meet her at her house. Shamanique
(08:09):
said at that point she was terrified. She was trying
to hold it together, trying to get home as quickly
as she could, and through it all, she really had
no idea what was going on. She made it sound
like the next events were kind of a blur. Now,
as we know from listening to this podcast, sometimes when
people go missing, police don't come right away. Sometimes even
(08:31):
when small children go missing, there's a delay. But fortunately
that was not the case here. By the time Schamanique
made it home, law enforcement was already there on the scene.
There were rangers from the Texas Wildlife Department, Emergency Services personnel,
and detectives from the Cass County Sheriff's Department. All of
these people in law enforcement were scouring those dark woods.
(08:54):
They were looking everywhere for those little girls. When Shamanique
got home, the first thing she did was check on
her three other children, who were fine and safe. The
Texas Game Wardens got the call at around ten pm.
They knew there were three children missing from a residence,
so when they got there, they brought the canine unit
with them. The dog alerted and started walking through those
(09:18):
backwoods toward a pond. It was a pond that was
back through the woods about two hundred yards away near
a neighboring property. Again, this is where it's so important
to try and clarify a location. And this is why
it's so important to understand both the dynamics of the
small town and of the crime scene, because just hearing
(09:38):
the details on the news, you might think this was
a local swimming hole or something. But I took a
look at the footage that was filmed from local news stations,
and that footage tells a very different story. Shamannique said
she had lived in that spot pretty much her whole life,
and she never knew there was a pond back there.
To get to it, you had to go through a
(09:59):
barbed wire fence and through a pretty dense wooded area.
Looking at the pictures, that looked more like a swamp.
Schamnique said her kids would not have known about that pond.
As it got later and later, shal Manique became more
and more frantic. She was focused on one thing and
that was finding her daughters. She was out back in
(10:20):
her yard while law enforcement continued their search, and then
one of the canine dogs alerted and they saw something
an overturned bike. In pictures in the news reports, you
can see that it's a purple kid's bike with pink petals.
Next to the bike was what looked like a blue
scooter kind of tipped over, leaning in on the bike.
(10:41):
After the dog alerted and the police found the bike,
they saw something else. The dogs were pulling toward that pond,
and police saw a pair of tennis shoes next to
the waterline. Then they saw footprints in the mud leading
down to the water, and the family confirmed a law
(11:02):
enforcement that that pair of little tennis shoes belonged to
sham Manique's five year old daughter Tomory. And there was
something else that was very strange about those shoes. On
Nancy Grace Shamanique said, Tomorri's shoes quote were found out
there stacked on top of each other, Chris Crossway, like
you would pack them in a suitcase end quote. She
(11:25):
said emphatically. My kids never do that. Never. Divers went
into the water and then in the early morning hours
of July thirtieth, at around two am, they found Shamanique's
eight year old daughter, Amaya. Amaya was the first, but
(11:46):
unfortunately not the last. In the end, investigators found all
three girls dead in that pond. They pulled their little
bodies out of the water one by one and sent
them for autopsis. After hearing that Amaya's body had been found.
Shaman had to be taken to the hospital. She later
(12:09):
learned that she was having a heart attack. She had
already had one hard episode after her mother died from COVID,
and now she had lost three daughters in one night.
After Shamanique's three daughters were found dead in that pond,
the story made local news. At first. The media reports
(12:30):
indicated that these deaths were being investigated as a drowning, which,
while horrific, is something that made it sound like it
might have been an unavoidable accident. But that's not what
happened here. Looking back in hindsight, I think that these
reports might have come out because of some comments made
early on by the Cass County Sheriff's office. Cass County
(12:52):
Sheriff Larry Rowe told a local newspaper, The Gazette, quote,
we have no idea what the girls were doing there
end quote. And then a lieutenant game warden named Jason
Jones told a local news station KTL that it was
unknown whether the little girls were swimmers or not. There
was another comment made by someone in law enforcement about
(13:13):
none of the little girls having life jackets on. So
all of those comments taken together definitely, in my opinion,
led toward the story being reported as a drowning, at
least initially. Very quickly, this case was turned over from
the local police department to the Texas Rangers. The officer
assigned to that case was named Josh Mason. Now, the
(13:37):
Texas Rangers are unique organization. Officially, they're the Texas State
law enforcement units. So like Arkansas has the Arkansas State Police,
in Texas, they're a little bit unique because they have
the Rangers. The Texas Rangers originally actually defended the frontier
back in the eighteen hundreds, and they do have a
(13:58):
complicated and sometimes brutal legacy. Author Doug Swanson wrote about
the alleged war crimes that the Texas Rangers committed back
in the day in his book, which is called Cult
of Glory, and he told NPR that back in the
day they did murder a lot of Mexicans and Mexican
Americans and had a strange idea of frontier justice. But
(14:22):
over the years, the Texas Rangers have modernized. They've actually
become one of the country's most elite detective units. The
Texas Rangers have solved a lot of cold cases it
was actually a Texas Ranger who got the notorious serial
killer Samuel Little to confess, But there have also been
allegations over the years that in some cases they have
(14:43):
coerce confessions. Samuel Little did confess to a lot of murders,
but some of those murders were based on very little evidence,
and a lot of people believe that the Rangers let
him confess to crimes even when there was not necessarily
evidence to back it up, because they wanted to close
those cases. I'm not going to go too far into
(15:04):
the weeds on the If you're interested in Texas Ranger history,
you can see they've had a lot of successes and
some controversies, just like many law enforcement organizations. I'm bringing
this up to make the point that, unlike some of
the cases I cover, this was not a case of
just some small town police department with no resources doing
everything themselves. They did do the right thing. They called
(15:26):
for outside help, they brought in the Rangers. The Texas
Rangers were there from day one. When those bodies were
pulled out of the water. On August second, the Texas
Rangers released a statement. They said, quote at the request
of the cass County Sheriff's Office the Texas Rangers are
investigating the drowning deaths of the three juveniles, ages five, eight,
(15:48):
and nine. The drowning occurred July thirtieth, around two am
at a private pond off State Highway seventy seven. The
three siblings had been reported missing around ten pm the
previous night. This is an ongoing investigation and additional information
will be released when it's available. Police did not give
(16:08):
out much information, which is totally normal in cases like this.
And remember this was two days after the girl's bodies
had been found. And that statement did two things. Number one,
it reinforced the public perception that these had been drownings.
And also, I'm noticing, in my opinion, the wordings seem strange.
(16:29):
They said the drowning occurred rather than saying the bodies
were recovered at two am, and whether it was on
purpose or not. This later caused a lot of confusion.
This statement seemed to assume a cause of death and
also a time of death, which is not normally standard
protocol in these investigations. For the next few months, there
(16:53):
was basically nothing on the news about these deaths. It
was not until eight months later that the Cass County
District Attorney, Courtney Shelton, announced that they were investigating the
deaths as a humide. On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty three,
Courtney Shelton said in a statement, quote autopsy reports concluded
(17:14):
the manner of death for all three girls with homicide,
indicating evidence of strangulation. The girls also suffered lacerations to
their faces. Multiple witness statements have been obtained, DNA testing
is ongoing, and the investigation will continue end quote. So
now everyone knew that three young girls had been strangled
(17:35):
and put into that pond. The rangers were now investigating
the case as a homicide, and there was a child
killer on the loose in Atlanta, Texas. It had been
eight months since the all of her sisters' bodies were
found in a pond. The district attorney had announced that
(17:56):
the girls had not drowned, as everyone initially thought that
their deaths were being investigated as homicides, and after months
of silence, Shawnique started speaking out. She told The Daily
Beast that strangers on social media had put horribly abusive things.
They were writing that she was a deadbeat mom, some
of them writing that her kids were better off dead.
(18:18):
I think at this point a lot of people were
wondering why she had been silent all this time, But
it turned out according to Shamanique, she told The Daily
Beast she suspected foul play from the jump. She also said,
quote fuck everyone else's feelings, I want answers end quote.
She wondered, just like everyone else did, why investigators had
(18:42):
waited so long to tell the public about these homicides.
It's possible that they held information back in the beginning
because they were focusing on a suspect, trying to make
a case against someone, and then after several months, maybe
they hit a dead end. Maybe they thought that they
were going to get more DNA or other types of
physical evidence from the pond, and because the little girl's
(19:04):
bodies had been there for several hours, they weren't able to.
This is all just speculation, but the bottom line is
that there had been months with no arrest, months where
a child killer was on the loose and the public
was totally unaware. At the end of the press release,
the District Attorney asked anyone with new information that would
(19:27):
help lead to an arrest to contact the Texas Rangers
So to me, the fact that the DA issued this
press release and that the police made a point of
asking the public for information means that somewhere there is
a missing piece and they know someone knows something. So
now that we know that those little girls did not
walk out of that house into that pond by themselves,
(19:50):
we know that the crime could have begun somewhere else,
possibly inside the home. So what could have happened inside
that one story house. Let's go back again to the
night that the kids went missing, July twenty ninth. N
is at work, she's changing a patient. She goes to
the nursing station. She gets a call from her cousin Paris.
(20:12):
And now I'm just going to point out something else
that she told Nancy Grace, because it seemed like even
at this point, she wonders why he's just now letting
her know about this. She also wondered why he was
calling her from the neighbor's house, why he hadn't first
called nine to one to one. On July twenty ninth,
(20:32):
according to the historical data I found on the internet,
on that date in Texarcana, sunset was at eight eighteen pm.
Remember this is the middle of the summer, so it
didn't get fully dark until about thirty minutes after that. Still,
it raises red flags for me that a babysitter in
a small house didn't notice three kids were missing until
(20:53):
after dark. Later, a local news station interviewed a neighbor,
a woman named Josephine Webster. She told this local news
station KTLA, that the guy presents ammably, meaning Paris, who
was staying in Shamanique's house, came over and asked her
for her house phone. So I'm wondering the same thing
(21:14):
that it sounds like sham Minique was, why did he
get the neighbor to call nine one one? Did he
not have a cell phone? Because the first thing that
I would have done if I was babysitting and someone's
children were missing was call their mom right that second.
By the way, Josephine said she was driving home at
around nine point thirty when she saw Paris. Now, remember,
(21:34):
Shamanique said she got the call a little after nine pm,
just a few minutes time difference. But as we know,
in cases like this, those few minutes, those tiny details
can be crucial. There are some indications that very early
on in the investigation, police were asking some of the
same questions that Shamanique was, and that rather than focusing
(21:56):
on sex offenders who were passing through the area, they
might be focusing on someone much closer to home. Shamanique
gave Nancy Gray some more details that I believe could
be crucial to this case. She said that right after
the authorities told her they found her little eight year
old Amaya's body, she saw something else. She said that
(22:18):
the divers pulled some tangled clothes out of the pond. Later,
investigators showed her photos of what they found. She recognized
that clothing as jackets that belonged to her children. But
the strange thing was, according to Shamanique, these jackets were
ones that her kids had outgrown. She said they had
thrown them into the trash at home. This again raises
(22:41):
a huge red flag because that suggests that someone else,
probably the killer, had been inside the house because someone
had to fish those jackets out of the trash. I
don't think that's something the little girls would have done
on their own. Shamanique said something else that was chilling
to me. She said the jackets were quote tied together
like a rope end quote. This is getting really dark,
(23:06):
but this is, unfortunately where my mind has to go
to try and figure out what happened those little girls.
What were those jackets for? Were they put there to
tie the girls up, or to tie them together so
their bodies would sink? Or did whatever bad thing happen
to them happen first in the house and then somehow
the killer dragged the bodies out to the pond using
(23:27):
those jackets. The cass County DA's press release referred to
the fact that the little girl's injuries were much more
extensive than had been initially reported. Local news stations had
reported that the little girl's spaces were bruised and that
they had lacerations on their faces, deep cuts and bruises.
(23:51):
Shamanique gave Nancy Grace more disturbing details. She said that
investigators had showed her photos of her daughter's bodies. Shamanique
said that Tamari had what she described as a busted lip,
but that her nine year old had extensive injuries and
were not just talking about a few cuts. She said
(24:12):
that they, presumably meaning the people who prepared her daughter
for burial, had to quote reconstruct one side of her face.
It looked like she took a beating on one side
of her face and it pulled her skin off end quote.
When the investigators talked to Shamanique, they also broke the
(24:35):
devastating news to her that they believed that all three
of her girls had been molested. Now, at this point,
a lot of people wondered why it took so long
to release autopsy results. There was some confusion here, and
I think it's really important to differentiate between what was
being told to the family and what was being made public.
(24:57):
Revolt Black News Weekly has been doing a lot of
reporting on this case. Urbienne said they contacted the cass
County DA office. They said that they were told the
autopsy had been delayed, but then when the press release
came out, it made it clear that authorities had known
from the beginning that homicide was the cause of death,
(25:18):
that they never thought this was some kind of accidental drowning.
Rolling Stone reached out to the District Attorney's office and
the DA. Courtney Shelton clarified a few things for Rolling Stone,
including the timeline. Courtney Shelton said that at least since
early August of twenty twenty two, just a few days
after the little girl's bodies were pulled out of that pond.
(25:41):
The DA's office had the autopsy results, and they knew
this had been a homicide. She said that investigators had
told Shamanique that it was a homicide from the beginning too.
Courtney Shelton said that on August fourth, Josh Mason, the
Texas ranger in charge of the investigation quote, met with
Shamanique Oliver, the mother of the children, and her father
(26:03):
and notified them that the deaths of all all three
children were not accidents. Anne provided both of them with
details from the preliminary autopsy report stating that the cause
of death was homicide end quote. Police got a lot
of criticism after that press release because a lot of
people wondered why it took them so long to make
(26:24):
their manner of death public and failed to warn the
community that there was a dangerous sexual predator and a
child killer at large, and a lot of people, including
Shamanique and the local Black Panther chapter, wondered if the
investigation would have unfolded differently if police were investigating the
death of three little white girls. Let's go back again.
(26:48):
Let's look at the victim's pattern of life and start
with the last people to see these little girls. We
cannot overlook the fact that these children were being looked
after by Paris Props. Paris was Shamanique's cousin. Her mother
and Paris's mother are sisters. Is a male cousin in
his early thirties. Shamanique said he had been staying with
(27:10):
her at her house and regularly babysite the children. Now,
Shamanique told urbn she had never had a problem with
Paris before when he was babysitting kids. But she also
shared something else that I found shocking, something she later
repeated to Nancy Grace. She said that her four year
old daughter told her and told police that her three
(27:33):
sisters walked into the woods with Paris Props. Yet, Shamanique
said police talk to Paris the day after the girls
went missing and never questioned him again. Now, I'm just
being logical here. I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm
literally just following the investigation's logical threat. We know that
investigators told Shamanique that they believed her daughters had been molested,
(27:57):
and we know that children are much more likely to
be molested by someone they know or by relative than
a stranger. So any mail, whether they were relative or not.
Any male who was staying in that home with those
children would need to be closely looked at by law enforcement.
So let's take a closer look at Paris Props. Because
(28:17):
there's been very little said about him. Most news reports
don't mention his name. There weren't any other males there
that night. We don't know a lot about the children's fathers,
but Shaminique has said that she was a single mom
and that the children's fathers had no contact with her
or with their children. I don't know if Schamanique was
(28:38):
ever suspicious of her cousin Paris, but it definitely seems
like by what she said publicly. Once the Texas Rangers
talked to her and her father, once they laid out
the case for her in early August, it seems clear
that something changed her mind. We don't know exactly what
the rangers told her, but we do know that after
(29:01):
they told Shamanique what they believed was going on, she
tried to run out the door. She said she remembers
thinking she was going to go out and hurt her cousin,
meaning Paris. Shamanique also had said something else that's crucial.
She said Paris has not been cooperative with the investigation.
She said Paris has not talked to her about it,
(29:22):
and that he moved out of her house and went
to live with his mom, Lemisha. She said he won't
talk to her and he won't talk to the police.
Neither Paris nor his mother have spoken publicly about this,
but if you look through his mother's social media, it's
obvious that she and her son have had issues before
with law enforcement. Back in twenty twenty one, Lemisha Paris's
(29:46):
mom was posting comments on Facebook that are public comments,
and she was talking about an incident in which she
referred to Paris having an altercation with the police and
getting his teeth knocked out. His mom said they meaning
the police hid Paris in another county, and she talks
about wanting to follow a lawsuity against police. My source,
(30:08):
the person who called into this podcast to tell me
about the case, said that he believed that Paris had
filed a lawsuit against police. But I've been looking through
court records and I haven't found any record of that,
so I don't know if the suit was ever filed,
or if it's something they thought about doing. His mom's
comments just seemed to indicate they were looking for a lawyer,
(30:28):
but they hadn't found one yet. Shamanique said that since
Paris me back with his mother, that his mother and
he are both actively trying to keep a police away
and they are not talking. Paris does have a criminal record.
I found some gun charges and drug charges. They were
(30:49):
mainly for small amounts of marijuana, meaning less than two ounces,
And of course I must point out none of these
things indicate that he's a murderer. Obviously, everyone is innocent
until proven guilty. I'm just trying to understand Paris and
the family dynamics since there's been so little reporting out
there about it. Paris did have a brother named Kevin Shepherd,
(31:11):
and Kevin Shepherd is a convicted killer. Again, I'm not
going to go too far into the details on Kevin's case, because,
of course, anyone's family members crimes are not a reflection
of them. It's a completely separate issue. But I think
it's important because it might explain a why Paris might
not want to talk to the police and beat some
(31:33):
of his mother Laitia's comments on social media and her
general attitude towards law enforcement in twenty twenty two, Paris's brother,
Kevin Shepherd, got life in prison for killing Donny Coombs
and Cynthia Arnold, a couple who went missing in September
of twenty eighteen. Cynthia was a mother who, at the
(31:54):
age of forty, had a run of bad luck. She
lost her job, she got a divorce, and she started
getting into methamphetamines. That's when she met her boyfriend Donnie Coombs,
he was also into drugs. In September of twenty eighteen,
a sheriff's office investigator in a neighboring county, Marion County,
said that she responded to a call and found a
burning red truck on a remote county road. By the
(32:17):
time the flames had been extinguished, that fire had burned
so hot the truck rims had melted to the road.
That truck belonged to Kevin Shepherd. Inside the truck, police
found the bodies of Donnie and Cynthia. When this first happened,
it seemed like the police had suspicions that Kevin might
(32:37):
have been involved, but they didn't have enough evidence until
an eyewitness came forward in twenty nineteen. This witness said
she was hanging out with Kevin in late September of
twenty eighteen. She said Kevin took her to an area
with no running water or electricity. Donnie and Cynthia were
there too, and this person said that all of them
(32:58):
were doing drugs. Then she said she was horrified when
Kevin basically said watch this. According to this witness, Kevin
shot both victims in the head and then dragged their
bodies to a fire pit and burned them. The FBI
and local law enforcement went to that location. They checked
(33:19):
the fire pit and they found traces of human bone.
Kevin got life without the possibility of parole. He's currently
behind bars serving out a sentence, and prosecutors said the
motive in that case was the fact that Donnie, one
of the victims, was supposedly going to testify against Kevin's uncle,
a man named Gary Shepherd, in a felony theft case.
(33:41):
Gary is also facing charges, but his trial has not
started yet. According to KSLA, when Lemisha Parris's mother was
asked about the jury's decision, she said, quote, I kind
of figured it was going to go this way because
we live in Cass County and that's how they operate.
End quote. Lemisia said that the family planned to appeal
(34:04):
the jury's verdict. I've not spoken to Lemesha or to Paris,
and obviously anyone has the right to not speak to
police without an attorney. In fact, that's what I would
advise most people to do. But I can say that
it's a red flag to me that Lemisha seems to
put all the blame on law enforcement. I was looking
(34:27):
through criminal records and I found something else that I
thought was interesting in Paris's criminal record. In another case,
he pleaded guilty to possession of a dangerous drug called
Gaba pinton. It's an anti epilepsy drug, but it's a
drug that has been used in some cases as a
date rape drug. So obviously my mind goes back to
(34:49):
that dark place, back to that house, into the dark
things that could have happened there. If the house was
the real crime scene and the bike was put by
the pond to stage something, then we have to ask ourselves.
Could the killer have tried to put the girls to sleep?
Was one of them more badly injured than the others
because she tried to wake up and intervene. Remember Josephine,
(35:14):
the neighbor who the local news station talked to the
reporter who interviewed her, Rading Edwards really seemed to care
deeply about this case. Radin said, quote, I would like
to see it come to an end. Somebody needs to
go to jail for this end quote. We see this
story over and over. The news organization contacts law enforcement,
(35:35):
they ask for a comment. Law enforcement says, we're not
giving out any details, and often the news reports stopped there.
But in this case, the reporters did a good thing.
They went that extra step. They drove out to that area,
and they obviously started canvassing and knocking on doors. That's
when Raydin interviewed Josephine, the neighbor. Josephine confirmed what had
(35:56):
already been reported on the news. She talked about Paris
coming to her house using her phone and calling Shamanique.
She added another crucial detail, one that threw a lot
more shade on Paris props. Josephine told the news channel quote,
he was wet, and I noticed that it looked like
(36:18):
all the way down, not sweat, it looked like water
end quote. So this, I have to say, blows my mind.
The sores who have been talking to about the case
the one who called the podcast says that Shamanique is
wondering the same thing that a lot of people are.
Why hasn't Paris been questioned more thoroughly and why hasn't
(36:40):
there been an arrest. Paris's mother has posted something else
that's interesting on social media. She put a photo of
a warrant the police had compelling Paris to give his
DNA to law enforcement and allowing them to use force
to get the DNA if necessary. I would love to
(37:00):
know what happened without warrant, because my source says they
believe that the search warrant was never executed. But Paris's
mother claimed in her post that Paris has voluntarily given
his DNA. So if the authorities were able to do testing,
and if they have Paris's DNA, why haven't they ruled
anyone in or out? Obviously I don't have access to
(37:21):
the case file, but there could be a few reasons why.
One thought, again, is that because the girl's bodies were
in the water for several hours, the DNA may have degraded.
Maybe police didn't have quite enough for an arrest and
they needed to push for a confession. But Paris and
the people around him, are not talking. The Daily Beast
(37:42):
asked Da Shelton about Paris. She said that he had
been questioned and that quote, he was the last person
known to be with the children prior to their deaths. However,
all possible leads are being followed. End quote. The New
Black Panthers leader Kwan Alex told Rolling Stone, quote, we
(38:02):
do believe that the root is racism. If these were
three beautiful, little, blond haired, blue eyed, white children from
a suburban community in Cass County, they would have handled
this entire investigation completely different. End quote. Whatever has happened
up to now, in my opinion, the focus should be
on what happens next, because Shamanique's neighbors and everyone else
(38:26):
in Cass County is rightfully terrified there could be a
sexual predator and child serial killer hiding in plain sight.
Someone out there knows something. The Texas Rangers, the Cast
County Sheriff's Office, and the Cass County District Attorney's office
are asking for any new information that would lead to
an interest in this case. If you know something, if
(38:48):
you have any detail, no matter how small, that could
help this mother learn what happened to her three children,
please call Texas Ranger Josh Mason at nine O three
two five five five seven two seven. Shamanique told The
Daily Beast quote, all on one want is justice for
my babies end quote. Helen Gone Murder Line is a
(39:18):
production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written
and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Music contributed by Ben Sale and this episode was scored
and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you have a
case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(39:39):
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six ' one four five. Please subscribe and leave us
a review wherever you listen to your podcast, School of
(40:01):
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